Thursday, June 27, 2013

Parting from Parthenay

This, without a doubt, is going to be my final blog entry in France.
This, without a doubt, is going to be my final day in Parthenay.

Before I even talk about how I feel, let me just give you a brief update.

So on Saturday the 22nd, the Rotary club of Parthenay had its annual "passation du pouvoir," where the entire club goes on an outing together. They have lunch, and then pass the role of club president to the current president's successor.
For this year's outing, we first visited a little elementary school in the countryside, a school for farm kids. This was the school the author Ernest Pérochon (the man my high school here is named after) attended. To start off, we got to do a little role play: everyone put on the black school robes, except I put on an instructor's robe.

You can find me to the left, standing next to the furthest left seated  person. I'm crossing my arms in a strict manner. 
We got to try our hand at writing like kids during that epoch, with calligraphy pens dipped in ink. Which I really did quite enjoy, despite my left hand smudging the pages terribly. (If you were left-handed at the time they tied your left hand behind your back and forced you to write with your write hand. I, however, do not live in such oppressive times and chose instead to suffer the inconveniences of writing with my left hand in the manner that suited me best.)
In one of the display rooms, I found this riddle that I find quite quaint.

"Le phare du bout du monde de Jules Vernes."
"Jules Vernes' lighthouse at the end of the world."
After our visit was done, we went to this lovely, typical medieval-themed French restaurant. (Knowing France, the building probably was medieval.) Outside, the menu was already tempting me...

Everything was DELICIOUS. In every sense of the word.
Inside, we had entertainment while feasting at our tables.

This pair spoke old French during their little acts. I managed to understand a bit of it, but like old English, I wouldn't say I had a complete grasp on what they were saying.
A candlelit meal within stone brick walls.
François, my counselor.
The then-president of the Parthenay Rotary handed out gifts and awards to certain members of the club, and I am very proud to say that my counselor received a Paul Harris Fellow award, a very prestigious and selective award!

"...in recognition of his generous help and his support in favor of a better understanding and good relations between the people of the world."
I really cannot thank him enough for everything he has done for me this year; finding me host families, permitting me to travel off by myself, understanding that I am young and crazy, needing to take full advantage of the fact that I am in France. All the work he has put into the exchange program has promoted him to be a part of the district team. Considering his easygoing and often sarcastic personality, I figure it's all the time he spends with exchange students that keeps him young!
After that very satisfying repast, we visited the nearby castle, Bellay-Montreuil. At this point, I have lost track of how many castles I have seen, but I will never be able to get rid of the feeling of awe whenever I find myself at the base of one, staring up at it.

An aerial view from the castle (no, I am incapable of flying, so I took this picture off of Google Images.)
At the end of that day, I said good-bye to my Rotary club. They, like many people, told me I would always be welcome in France when I choose to return.

The next day, a week before my departure, I chose to finally get around to packing. However, I didn't only have packing on my mind; I also had the oral examination for the French bac. To familiarize with the process, read this blog entry
I'm not usually one to stress, being very down-to-earth, but the combination of having to pack up my year and study the 22 texts we took up in class throughout the school year was extremely overwhelming. Even though the bac doesn't count, I didn't want to go in and make a fool of myself. And my crazy mind, influenced by the constant heckling of my French teacher, kept on repeating that I was capable, and I might as well prepare for it. 

For the oral, I had the stack of papers on the left to review. Did it intimidate me? Of course it did.
I spent about two hours each on Sunday and Monday scrutinizing texts that would have been difficult enough to understand in English, reviewing the literary procedures I had learned about. The 22 texts were categorized into either of the following: an excerpt from Si c'est un homme, a book that is a Holocaust survivor's testimony, a Baudelaire poem (which is what I would have wanted...), an excerpt from the novel Bel-Ami (which I didn't want, and I'll explain why), or an excerpt from the French version of the play Antigone. Now I did not want Bel-Ami for various reasons. I just wasn't interested in reading about how a guy rises to power using women, and I wasn't in class most of the time they studied it, being on visit with my parents. I did receive the copies of the texts and their correction sheets (to better understand everything about them), but instead of studying them on the bus rides to and from Poland, I chucked them to the side. So essentially, on Monday, I spent the afternoon learning these 6 texts I was unfamiliar with and reading their correction sheets, excerpts from a novel I barely knew the plot and only read the first chapter of. 

My "I am so sick of this §!&@%$#\" face, taken the very moment I was feeling it.
However, when I got to the final excerpt, the 6th, I realized I didn't have the correction sheet. I read through it once, decided I had done more than enough work for the day, and told myself, "It's one out of twenty-two. I'm not gonna get it. My luck isn't that bad."

HAH.

The next day, I was unimaginably nervous going up to the high school for the last time. Not as nervous as when I had to take the practice test, but nervous nonetheless. I had to be there at about 7h40. I was third to go, and as I waited with the 7 hour kids outside room 104, I looked in my bag and realized I had forgotten my pencil case. Wow. So I walked back outside to breathe some fresh air, went back to my house, retrieved it, then biked back to the school. At 9 am I entered the room, still feeling nervous, and the examiner told me to take a seat in the back. Unlike the practice test, he didn't hand me my text right away, so I just sat there for a few painstaking moments before he told me:

"You will be working on the last text of Bel-Ami."

At that moment, my face probably looked something like this.

(Now I'm wondering why I never did this in other entries, this picture of my face cracks me up.)
But really, what could I do but laugh at my terrible, terrible luck?
After scribbling obscenities on the back of my draft paper, I actually got to work and tried my best to understand it.

My draft paper
My notes on the text.
I walked up to the examiner and gave my best shot at presenting it. I doubt I spoke ten minutes, but I did speak a lot. He then asked me questions about the excerpt, and I was able to answer them. However, I was kind of screwed when he asked me questions about the book. I did not know the main character was married two times prior to marrying the first woman he takes advantage of. Nor did I know that his mistress, who he cheats on his first wife (in the book) with, was one of his ex-wives. When the examiner asked how he ended up with Suzanne (his wife in the end of the book, their marriage is discussed in this excerpt), I said he divorced Madeleine. And then he asked how he divorced Madeleine, and since I didn't read the book, I couldn't come up with an answer. The examiner prodded, "What, at the time, was the only way a man could divorce a woman?" My mind was in disarray (like it has been this last week), so I speculated, "...he killed her?" 
NOOOOOO she got caught cheating on him, apparently.
Well.
It lasted twenty minutes like it was supposed to. The examiner told me, "I know it's more difficult for you, but overall, you did fine." 
I thanked him and left, ELATED.

Aaaand ladies and gentlemen, that is the last thing I will ever have to do in that high school!! I'm FREEEEEEE

Not really, though. Once I was done with that, it was imperative I had to focus on packing.

All my clothes which, compared to other packing pictures I've seen  from other exchangers, aren't too numerous.
I set aside clothes to give away. Yesterday, Claire my newbie and Aurélie (an outbound to Taiwan who is mentioned here) came over to my house. They were happy to receive some of my clothes, and I was even happier to give them away. They helped me pack and kept me company.
With them, I went on my last walk around Parthenay and its medieval quarter, showing Aurélie my host town that I had shown to so many other people before throughout this year.

Parthenay, Poitou-Charentes, France. My home for my junior year.
Later that evening, I had to say good-bye to them. But I didn't cry.
That's the thing...
This past week, I've just been bracing myself for my departure. I almost broke down after saying good-bye to my French teacher on the 19th when she told me it was really nice to have me in class, but I managed to stop myself saying, "No. It's not the end yet." And contrary to my expectations, I have not had any breakdowns lately. Not even after saying good-bye to Brooke, not even after saying good-bye to Claire. Not while packing my bags, not during my last dinner with my host family last night. Tonight, I will have kebab with my school friends, and it will be the last time I see them. And then I will stop by my first host family's house to tell them good-bye one last time. And I figure that's where the tears will start.
I leave Parthenay tomorrow morning at around 8:30. What will happen after that...is for another blog entry ;)

As for Parthenay.
Living in a countryside town has not been the most pleasing or easy thing, but what this quaint, 1000-year-old settlement has taught me was to learn to love my surroundings, no matter what they are, and that it is possible to succeed and integrate myself anywhere. Now that it's my last day here, I ask myself... When will I get to meander through cobblestone streets lined by half-timbered houses again? When will I be able to stroll through the little shopping quarter, today's hits blaring out through the speakers above my head again? When will I be able to climb up the narrow spiral staircase of the tower to look out over the river and into the distance? When will I hear the church bells chiming on my way to school in the morning? When will I go to the pâtisserie to treat myself to a tasty French dessert?  When will I be able to reflect on life while looking out of a window on a bus going somewhere, looking out at the view of the vast fields of the French countryside?
I don't know.
Sometime in the future. (Except for the part about school because I'm absolutely finished with French school.)
All those nostalgic elements aside, this city girl is happy to get rid of her little town blues. She will forever be thankful to them, however, for showing her life as she would never have chosen to live it, and for helping her discover things about herself she never would have known had she not been here, in the middle of nowhere. In an obscure French town named Parthenay.

But for now, I must continue to finalize my packing. 

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Obligatory Post on the 19th: June

Well folks, it's been a whole year since I posted my first blog entry.

And it's been two weeks since I posted my last entry, so I'll write about what has happened since then.

June 12, last Wednesday, was an important day on my exchange, because it was the last day of school! I can safely say that I have never been more happy for school to be out than I was then. After all the days finishing at 1730, the work, and the bad grades I managed to start getting used to (disclaimer: my overall grade ended up being above average, despite the fact that I did terribly on a lot of tests), it all finished at noon last Wednesday, just like that. Quite a few kids skipped, seeing as the final grades had all been calculated and  there was nothing else that could be done on the last day of PE and econ. However, I decided to go, just to finish the year off right until the end.
Afterwards, I had lunch with my friends Noémie and Flavie, and then we took the bus to Niort. We spent the afternoon roaming the boutiques and lounging on the grass.

They were leaning down since they both bought new heeled sandals, making them even more tall than me...
Parthenay is well-known for its cows

That, however, wasn't the last time I saw them, because I knew I would see them again when I returned to the high school to take the bac, the final exam, the first of which was today. But that's for later.

As I have mentioned in a previous blog entry, I had planned to see a special friend in Paris for the day on Saturday, June 15. She and I, both being organized girls who are proactive in making things happen, managed to pull this off. 
That friend is, of course, Sari, a girl I would consider my best friend from Eurotour (the one who stalked my blog before even meeting me), and we spent our day quite literally running around Paris. 
As the train pulled into the Gare Montparnasse, I uncharacteristically got up from my seat before the train came to a full stop (which a lot of French people do) and, my heart racing, stood by the door. As it opened, I leaped out of it and brisk-walked towards the waiting quay, knowing she would be there. I saw her at the edge of the tracks with a camera up to her face anxiously filming my arrival. When we noticed each other, we squealed out of sheer delight. I ran towards her and we flung our arms around each other in a tight hug, laughing deliriously. We didn't stay that way too long,  however; we had a full itinerary planned and absolutely no time to lose. 
After I purchased my 3,65€ unlimited metro ticket, we hopped on line 6 and got off at Denfert-Rochereau to see the catacombs.
Unfortunately, we did not anticipate nor read about the line of people stretching to the other end of the block that, according to a lady we asked, would take about two hours to get to the front, so we decided to bail and pick something else to do. 
After taking line 4 from Denfert Rochereau, we ended up in the Saint Germain des Près quarter, the same place I was in with Lydia last time I went to Paris. We went to a papeterie called L'Ecume des Pages, buying some gifts to bring back with us, before returning to the metro station and planning our next stop.

This candid picture of me just screamed "vintage polaroid," so here you go. 
Originally having it planned for the afternoon but deciding it'd be more time-economic to go there right then, we went up to the Montmartre quarter using line 4 to Barbès-Rochechouart (I LOVE how that is pronounced... imagine something like "barbezz rosheshwar") then line 2 to Blanche. Immediately upon emerging from the depths of the metro at this station, we were greeted by the sight of the Moulin Rouge across the street.
I wanted to see the Moulin Rouge because the movie of the same name is one of my favorites and because I had only seen it once before from the bus. Up the street was a famous café called the Café des 2 Moulins that I also wanted to see due to its role as a main setting in another one of my favorite movies, Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain. 
Which leads me to conclude - while most girl best friends watch cheesy romantic movies together, Sari and I take it a step further to actually visit the places they are set in.


Rather than go back down into Blanche, we rushed through the Boulevard de Clichy to find the station Place de Clichy, where we boarded line 13 taking us directly down to Varenne next to the grounds of Les Invalides. 

This candid picture of me screamed "this belongs in a travel magazine" so I decided to add a fake sun shining in the corner by the Eiffel Tower, yeah
Once our tickets (which were free!) had been acquired, we took a look at Napoleon's tomb. 


I had been there once before, on my 8th grade Europe trip. Sari wanted to see it and, since I remembered that it was free for anyone under 18, we added it to the itinerary deeming it worth the visit.
We didn't stay too long, as we had an appointment at the Bateaux Mouches. To get to the iconic boats, we headed back to Varennes, took line 13 to Invalides, then RER C to Pont de l'Alma where we then, panting and ready for a good meal, proceeded to cross the Alma Bridge to arrive at the Bateaux Mouches. For our reservation on a lunch boat, we had to board before 1245, and after a rather hectic morning, we made it in time!

Upon boarding the lunch boat, accordion music was playing live from a very talented accordionist. All the tables were alongside the windows, so we got a view of the Seine as the boat moved along, past famous landmarks, for an hour and forty-five minutes. The lunch was heavenly, the conversation sprightly, and it was a perfect way to spend time with an amazing friend.

The interior
The menu
The adorable accordionist
My entrée (appetizer): salmon tartare, sundried tomatoes, and olive oil pearls (I was not aware that such things existed)
Duck, seasonal vegetables, and this tasty herb cracker
Pineapple carpaccio (thinly-sliced, chilled pineapples) with strawberry syrup and coconut sorbet
Standard picture with the Eiffel Tower in view
Two-in-one deal
Once that was done at about 1445, our final stop was the Montmartre butte. From Alma-Marceau, we took line 9 to Miromesnil, changed to line 13 then found ourselves once more in Place de Clichy, then took line 2 to Anvers. From there, it was a straight and tiring walk up the butte to get to the Place du Tertre, the artists' square.

I didn't take this picture. This place is always stiflingly crowded, so I stole this picture off the internet.
Typical Parisian side restaurant. (I did take this picture.)
I would draw HIM anytime. ;)
After one round through the Place du Tertre, we bought some souvenirs (like matching Paris scarves) and then took pictures of the Sacre Coeur and the panorama that could be seen from the steps in front of it.

 


While I have already seen an aerial view of Paris many times, the vastness of this beautiful, romantic, eternal city never ceases to awe me. :)
Back in Anvers, we took line 2 back to Place de Clichy, then line 13 to the Gare Montparnasse. We were there at about 1640, since my train would leave at 1712. There, we did our secret handshake and bade each other good-bye once more.

For your information, yes, that is a Starbucks.
However, I wasn't that sad because I really did think the end of Eurotour would be the last time I saw her on this exchange. 
Besides, I know we're going to pull off another stunt as crazy as this one in the future. ;)

The next day, Sunday the 16th, Claire and I left to go to Brooke's place in Château-du-Loir (NOT to be confused with the famous châteaux de la Loire). 

Departing on train from the Poitiers gare, my home gare
I was happy to know that we had a two hour layover in Tours, the city whose train station I fell in love with the first time I found myself in it. But for once, I actually exited it!

Its exterior, equally magnificent
The hôtel de ville
After nearly 6 hours of travel, we reached Brooke's. The next day, Monday the 17th, we spent the day in Angers. Angers is arguably my favorite city in the Pays de la Loire region of France.

 


The three of us sat down for lunch at a brasserie; I ordered moules-frites (mussels and fries), a French meal I have really come to enjoy this year. That was probably the last time I'd have them on exchange...

I had these ones cooked in curry sauce! 
At one point, Brooke randomly said to me, "Look over there, isn't that one of the outbounds?" I looked over to where she was pointing, and there was a familiar face; however, he had shades on, so I couldn't be too sure. We were about 93,78% sure it was him, though, so we kept looking over. Sometimes, or so we thought, he would look over at us too, but it was only for an instant. We resolved we'd go over there and settle the issue at some point, but instead it was him who approached us! As he neared, I exclaimed, "On croyait que c'était toi!" (We were thinking it was you!)

 

This outbound is Arthur, going to Brazil. He couldn't stay too long as he was in the process of leaving with his mother, but they both chatted with us for a few minutes anyway. Brooke leaves tomorrow, and I leave in 11 days, so seeing him was uplifting to us, and we could tell he was happy to see us as well. If you're reading this, I'd like you to wish all these wonderful outbounds the best of luck for their exchanges. I know I'll be thinking of them my rebound year. 
Later that day, I saw Aurore (Tualatin's inbound last year) again! 


Incidentally, we were at the same café as this one I mentioned way back in September. I was once again drinking my habitual sirop de fraise à l'eau

Thinking, a classic French past-time
The three of us
Aurore couldn't stay too long either since she had exams to study for, but it was swell to see her nonetheless. We knew we were going to see each other again sometime, so it was good-bye for now. I let her know how special of a friend she was to me, since she was, after all, the first French person I got to practice the language with. Look how far I've gotten now.
Yesterday, I said good-bye to Brooke for the last time on this exchange. She was one of those people without whom my exchange would have been drastically different, somebody I could rely on through thick and thin. Sure, I teared up hugging her good-bye, but I know that I'll see her too again somewhere, like I will see everyone who means the most to me. As I wrote in her notebook...

The pink boxes censor personal information that is not provided to the general public.
Though you could probably guess that the names blocked out belong to certain outbound boys, being French and all y'know. 
But yeah.
The trains going back yesterday were the last I were to take on this exchange. SNCF, the Société National des Chemins de Fer, won't be having me as a client anytime soon, and it's a sad thought.
On my last train, I made a list of about 30 items of "Traveling by Train - The Little Things." Here are some of the items on that list:
  • inserting the ticket into the yellow composting machine, hearing the whir and the stamp
  • the conductor announcing, "attention au départ" right before the train leaves, and this song playing in my head
  • buying tickets at the guichet, the satisfying noise of them being printed out
  • Photomatons
  • the electronic board showing "composition des trains", a little diagram of a train formed out of red-orange pixels with each numbered car corresponding to a repère
At the end of that note on my iPad, I attached this picture of my final time on a train:


It may be the end for now, but one day in the future (probably to meet up with my outbound fiancé again HAHAHA just kidding) I know I'll be invading the SNCF's train stations once more.

That brings us to today.
Today was the first bac I had to take, the written French test. To check out the procedure, click here to read about the practice test I had to take for it. 
Intending to do my absolute best on it, inspired by some encouraging words my fellow hardworking Asian-American Andy told me on Skype last night, I fearlessly attacked the texts of the corpus.
I snorted when I saw that one of them was an excerpt from The Grapes of Wrath, a book I had to read last year (that I only skimmed because it was too long and not my cup of tea). 
The question of synthesis for the texts was, "How do these texts characterize the maternal figures that they talk about?" A question that I found interesting, except the entire time this French rap song about appreciating your mom was playing in my head.
I spent two hours on that question before moving on to the main part of the bac.
Had the commentary assignment been to analyze the excerpt from Grapes of Wrath, I would have chosen it in a heartbeat, but the "Invention" seemed more plausible. Drawing from text A, which was the narrator's description of her mom who had just gotten home from a trip to Paris (haha go figure), the assignment was to write a portrait of an ordinary person but in a fascinating manner, thus rendering them extraordinary. 
Hm, I thought. Ordinary people worthy of being called extraordinary?
EXCHANGE STUDENTS
But which exchange student?
I chose to write about my host sister Marie, who returned to Parthenay on June 7. I wrote about how she was just a normal French high schooler who dared to spend a year in India, a country completely different from the one she had been living in all her life. I wrote about how I only knew her through photos and internet conversations, but I followed her life, observing pictures I liked and describing them. I wrote about how we finally met for the first time, how her first dinner she ate rice and tomato sauce with her hands because that was how she ate during Indian meals, and how then I saw how much she had adopted her host culture. I finished it off by saying that I am very lucky to have her as a host sister, a fiery girl with her own opinions of the world now that she has seen the impoverished conditions too many human beings live in, and I am proud of what she has done. 
Soon it will be my turn to return home and feel like nothing has changed, like my entire year was a dream. But not yet. I do realize that it will be me who has changed for the better, but as for coming home, I'll write about that when the time comes.
I don't really care what the results are on my test; the bac doesn't count for me. I just find it funny how I managed to relate it to exchange. 
Everything the rest of my life will have some kind of rapport with this exchange, but what can I say? It only has been the greatest year of my life so far. 
And it ends in 11 days.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

The Three-Year Exchange: The Apogee of My Inbound Experience

One of the many emotions I felt this weekend, my last weekend with my beloved inbounds of District 1510, and the main emotion I am feeling now as I am wondering how to start this entry, is confusion.

The confusion mainly is a result of the fact that our first inbound weekend together was at the beach, and our last one just happened to be at the beach as well. It really didn't seem like that long ago we were in Le Pouliguen when we first met, hopelessly confused about how to begin our new, strange lives. And there we were together by the sea again, hopelessly confused about where the time went. Throughout the weekend of May 31 to June 2, I could not stop thinking about my very first few days in France. I almost felt like the Rotarians did it on purpose. If we were anywhere else, my mind wouldn't have spent as much time being preoccupied with the first weekend.

When we first arrived, we went to Le Pouliguen (the sun in the map). This time, we were in Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, represented by the swimmer.


The thing that was special about this weekend, however, was that the 40 or so outbounds would all be there too. Friday evening was essentially for everyone to assemble at the camp called Le Village au Bord de la Mer (The Village at the Seaside).

Nestled within those trees was our location for the weekend




 François, my counselor, drove Claire, Matthieu, Clara (another outbound from Parthenay, going to Taiwan!), and me there, and we arrived sometime past 1700. Little by little, the other inbounds arrived. As usual, it felt amazing to be reunited, but I couldn't help feeling a tinge of sadness knowing that that was the last time everyone would be reunited like that.
As for the outbounds, I was excited to see some familiar faces again and super excited to meet new ones. I spent a lot of time talking to them, getting to know them. They are such sweet kids. Some told me they pretty much thought I was French because of the way I spoke. Oh how I would love to be in their place, a fresh, unknowing, confused, anxious, thrilled outbound again! Speaking with them helped me take my mind off the fact that my exchange is about to end, for I felt like I was reliving my days as a District 5100 outbound all over again in the company of my fellow outbounds.
That night, we had free time. I played some cards with inbounds and outbounds alike. There was a game called Le Pouilleux that was exactly the same as a game I really enjoyed growing up still living in the Philippines, except the game there is called Unggoy-Unggoy (Monkey Monkey). The French name doesn't mean anything, but I just found it peculiar that the first time I've encountered that game in years had to be in France. Did the idea just come to two different people on different sides of the planet? Or did it originate somewhere and just spread around the world? One can only imagine...
Once I was done with that, I went and joined a few of my inbound friends in their room, signing notebooks and flags (an activity done throughout the weekend), before retiring for the night.

The following day, I was one of the first to get up and eat breakfast. Since we had some time before our first activity of the day, Brooke, Corrine, Maya (Turkey), and I decided to walk up the large sand dune to view the ocean, the sun shining in our eyes and the wind whipping against our faces. The coldness was invigorating.

Getting up there...
High School Musical-esque

The four of us!
The view from the other side
Later that morning, the inbounds worked with Julie (the music teacher who lives in Paris) on the show we were preparing for the outbounds. One thing I love about my inbound group that makes us very special is the fact that we have some very musical individuals. Thus, the nickname "Les Troubadours du Monde" (The Troubadours of the World) was bestowed upon us. In Le Pouliguen and in Rennes, my inbound group has put up spectacles which include such acts as skits, singing, and dancing. As a final hurrah, we had a show planned for our last night.
But before that, we had a lot of time to spend just being with each other.
For instance, we got to pass some of the afternoon at the beach.

Soundtrack here
With the realization that we had never gone swimming in an ocean in France before, Brooke and I immediately stripped down to our bikinis and ran into the ocean which, as we were expecting, was nothing close to warm. But we enthusiastically kept walking in anyway until we reached the point where the waves would roll over our heads as they came. This daring, insane act made me think of something I did with two of my 5100 outbound friends, not so long ago... Some of the outbound girls joined Brooke and me as we bathed in the Atlantic Ocean. We all stayed for quite a while, laughing, splashing, riding the waves. The sun continued to shine broadly above us; it was a perfect day.

Brooke and me after our swim
Once I was done swimming, I felt like warming up on the sand, so I joined some friends.

Sabrina, Shivani, Andy, Lucien (outbound to Australia), Betty, and me
Could we look any happier? :)
On the way back from the beach, I had a rather amusing conversation with Lucien in French, English (he speaks amazingly well for a French kid...), French with the American accent, and English with the French accent. Out-of-the-ordinary happenings such as this are why I'm so glad to be a part of Rotary!

Later that afternoon, the inbounds ran through the show before dinner. Our spectacle officially began at 2100. I of course participated, playing a piano piece called "Dedication," singing a cover of "Home" (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros) with Brooke and my ukulele, and then "Il y a" (Jean-Jacques Goldman) with Julie. Other acts included a belly dance by Vivi the Brazilian, a song number by the infamous duo Leo and Evan with guitar and xylophone, the Harlem Shake, and Dana from Argentina and her host brother Nathan doing a musical number.




At the end of our first show together, we all sang Hey Soul Sister by Train and I'm Yours by Jason Mraz. Once again, those songs were to be the finale; we sat close together ready to sing our hearts out, but instead of performing to each other and a few Rotarians, we were singing to the future generation of exchange students. I was on my ukulele next to Leo on his guitar. As the last repetition of "I'm yours" faded and cheers rang out, the inbounds were very emotional. Beaming but with tears in our eyes, we stood up and just went around hugging each other. So much had changed in us since the first time we sang as a chorus and found ourselves in a beach side town, but one thing stayed the same- we were all there for each other, as we are now, as we always will be. I truly will never forget the lifelong friends Rotary has blessed me with.

Once that was all wrapped up, we had time to do whatever we wanted. I chose to spend it with my friends, inbounds and outbounds alike, outside. We were up late, chatting, taking photos, being crazy exchange students.

Night is coming...

Me and Virginie, an outbound to Taiwan
Me and Lucien
Aw yeah.
At some point, I found myself on the top of the sand dune with other exchange students, music blaring from somebody's iPod, us dancing to it in near total darkness. The moon and stars illuminated the clear night sky and the ocean, and in the distance we could see lights of a coastal town. We were all carefree and ecstatic to be in each other's company, and were more than enthusiastic to sing along badly to whatever song was playing. Oh, the world of exchange students. It's an endless party.

The next and last day, Sunday, was a special day for the outbounds. A ceremony was scheduled for them in the afternoon, where they would receive their Rotary blazers (in the bright French blue, known around the world). Before any of that started though, we had even more time to hang out and sign each other's stuff.

Some outbound girls and me!
Grégoire (outbound to Russia), Guillaume (outbound to Pennsylvania), me, and Vivi
You can find these two dashing young Frenchmen here ;)

Once the ceremony was about to begin, all the inbounds put on their blazers as well.

Leo (Brazil), Andy (my Asian-American buddy), and me

To start off, each country was called up, and the corresponding inbounds representing it walked up to show themselves.

USA! USA!
And then, in alphabetical order, each outbound was called up along with the name of their exchange country. A Rotarian then handed them their blazer and business cards, and they walked back to take their seat. 

My outbound Matthieu, ready to represent France on exchange :')
I found the ceremony quite beautiful. Here are all these young, charismatic people, about to go on the most daring adventure of their lives. They have no clue what's in store for them, most have never been to their host countries before, much less speak the language, yet here they all are, unfazed, determined. I felt so incredibly proud of them. They were just so giddy and excited, wearing their blazers and handing out business cards, and then later updating their Facebook profile and cover photos... I remember exactly when I was like that. I remember exactly when I took photos like these ones with my outbound group.

They're so precious.   
The roles reversed... Betty and me standing with Louise, Matthieu, and Océane, lucky inbounds of 5100 for 2013-2014!
Soon after that, people started leaving. And good-byes began to be bid. Tears fell, streaming down my face and on the faces of my friends. My friends who have been with me since the very beginning, who understand me and this experience that I'm living, who I share some of the best memories of my life with. My friends who I can rely on no matter what happens, no matter how different we are, no matter how much we change. The inbounds of District 1510, 2012-2013. We are going to remember being a part of this group for the rest of our lives, and never stop feeling proud of it. After everything we have been through, saying good bye this weekend was extremely difficult. Somehow I brought myself to smile behind my tear-stained face, especially when the cheerful outbounds told me not to cry. I told them, "This will be you next year. Just wait." They understood. 
I felt like I was literally being ripped apart as I had to let go after every tight hug. My heart felt empty. I tried my best to tell everyone how much I loved them and how much their company meant to me, but sometimes, words in any language don't suffice to express certain sentiments. 
We will never be together as a group like that again. 
In weeks, we will all go our separate ways, leaving our exchange year behind us. 
But that's part of life. Nothing lasts forever. We can't always get what we want. I can, however, keep the memories of the times I've spent with my inbounds in my heart and relive them fondly whenever I wish. And with this flag I had everyone sign, I won't ever forget their names or where they come from.


Les Troubadours du Monde, inbounds District 1510 generation 2012-2013... thank you for being a major part of the best year of my life. I don't know what my exchange would have been without you all. See you in the future, on some other grand adventure. :)